Category: Nanodot

from the ban-it-first-ask-questions-later dept.
In a lengthy position paper posted on their web site No Small Matter! Nanotech Particles Penetrate Living Cells and Accumulate in Animal Organs ETC Group, which describes itself as "dedicated to the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights," calls for "an immediate moratorium on commercial production of new nanomaterials [and for launching] a transparent global process for evaluating the socio-economic, health and environmental implications of the technology."

from the follow-your-affinities dept.
Gina Miller writes "A July 18, 2002 Brookhaven National Laboratory press release reports that researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a material (which was then tested at Brookhaven) with gold nanoparticles deposited in a gradient of decreasing density along a silica surface. The decreasing gradient of particles was formed because the particles bound to organosilanes that had previously been emitted as a vapor and then deposited in a gradient of decreasing density on the surface according to increasing distance from the emitter. The press release has what appear to be AFM images of the decreasing density of gold nanoparticles."

from the molds-from-molecules dept.
RobertBradbury writes "Science Daily provides a nice summary of work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in which a team of chemists have developed a process using dendrimers to produce artificial antibodies."

"Now if we can just get a design for a molecular sorting rotor to attach them to we would have one of the key components that one needs to build nanorobots like respirocytes."

from the here-and-now dept.
TimHarper writes "Nanocatalysis is one area of nanotechnology that is already beginning to alter the economics of energy production, and billion dollar deals have already been signed. The shift away from dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf region also has implications for the bargaining power of OPEC, and provides significant opportunities in the energy sector for both Russia and China. In the post-September 11th world, desire to reduce dependence on imported energy is hot topic both in Washington and Brussels, and nanocatalysis is starting to make this possible."

from the phonons-and-photons dept.
Gina Miller writes "Using an instrument much like an atomic force microscope with a platinum tip as an antenna to focus an infrared laser beam, a group of German scientists was able to measure very strong reflection of the laser beam over nanometer-scale patches of scanned crystal surface when the frequency of the laser was very close to the vibration frequency of the crystal. This could lead to determining the composition of the surface to nanometer-scale resolution, or perhaps to building storage devices with 10-nm bits, equivalent to a storage density near 1 Tbit inch^-2. See:" Infrared antenna for nano-size mapping of crystal vibrations

Tony Garnock-Jones writes "The MacDiarmid Institute, a recently-establshed New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence, is organising an international conference on Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, AMN-1, to take place in early 2003. Three Nobel Laureates, Professors Alan MacDiarmid, Alan Heeger and Hideki Shirakawa, have agreed to participate."

from the give-credit-where-credit-is-due dept.
In his column Unfogging the Future on Tech Central station, Foresight Director Glenn H. Reynolds writes about a new government report entitled Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance (the subject of a Nanodot post July 13, 2002) as a salient example of something the government did right. Reynolds applauds the report's frank assessment that radical technological changes are coming, and its realization that delay in dealing with these changes may mean being overwhelmed by catastrophe.

from the let-us-reason-together dept.
Technology Fear Factor, by Daintry Duffy and Sari Kalin, originally published in Darwin Magazine May 2002. Published on KurzweilAI.Net July 21, 2002.

Three futurists — George Gilder, Ray Kurzweil, and Jaron Lanier — agree that emerging dangerous technologies will require smarter defenses, such as standards diversity, decentralized systems, a transparent society, better communications between factions, and mutually beneficial collaboration of business leaders.

from the new-tools dept.
Gina Miller writes "A July 23, 2002 EE Times.com article, Finding the charge within angstroms, reports that a team from Munich has built a highly sensitive charge detector from the combination of a quantum dot with a nanomechanical device. The team is comprised of researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians University and the Walter-Schottky Institute. This device could support realtime scanning with resolutions down to the sub-Ångstrom level. According to the group leader, Prof Blick, 'This system allows for ultra-sensitive displacement detection, which is quite important for any scanning probe application.' Applications of the technique include communications electronics as filter elements and sensor components."

TimHarper writes "Trends in Nanotechnology 2002 09 Sep 2002 – 13 Sep 2002 – Santiago de la Compostela, Spain Europe's largest scientific and technical applied nanotechnology conference, "Trends in Nanotechnology" conference (TNT2002) will be held in Santiago de la Compostela, Spain. Keynote speakers from IBM, HP, Samsung, NASA and NEC will be presenting the latest applications of their nanotechnology reseach. For more information: http://www.cmp-cientifica.com/TNT2002.html"